First off, I don’t know how bad it is. Asked a lot of people after the game tonight, and nobody seems to know just how bad Matt Duchehe’s right knee is. Yes, I tried Duchene himself, but no response. That means a long wait ’til tomorrow for Avs fans, when more word should be known.

I won’t make any predictions. It’s up to the doctors to tell us, I’ve learned the hard way over the years. It didn’t look that bad, but knees are delicate things.

The loss of Duchene for an extended period obviously would not be good news, and would really test the Avs’ already thin depth up front. He hasn’t had a great season, but he’s still put up 24 points and those will be hard points to replace.

I would suspect we’ll see a lot more of Stastny and O’Reilly as 1-2 centers, and the imminent return of David Jones could alleviate some pressure at the wings. Hey, and Peter Mueller skated today too. Do I have a clue when he’ll be back? Nope. But he skated today.

About tonight’s game:
– Complete cheap shot by Raffi Torres on Jan Hejda. Hejda was down for quite a while but returned to the game. BUT, he said he isn’t feeling 100 percent and often concussion symptoms take a day or two to appear. Torres is a gutless player, and this is just par for his course. He should be suspended for the cheapie to a guy’s head, and don’t give me anything about how Hejda “should have been on his feet.” So, a guy is on his knees, that makes it OK to stick out and elbow and crack him in the head while he’s not looking? No.
Here is Hejda talking about it:

Torres was suspended four games last season for this hit on Edmonton’s Jordan Eberle:

This was a classic “head shot” by Torres on Hejda. He should and must be suspended. If he doesn’t do it, Brendan Shanahan will have fallen down on the job.

– Chuck Kobasew made a nice hard-working play on Landy’s game-winner too. This is the first nice thing I’ve said about Kobasew in quite a while.

– Erik Johnson wasn’t moving his feet enough tonight. He had a couple of good shifts, but was bailed out a couple other times by Semyon Varlamov for some poor play in his own end. Johnson MUST skate to be effective.

– Ryan O’Reilly drives a pretty nice Porsche, I saw after the game. Well done, Factor.

– Kyle Quincey turned the puck over a couple of times. If he thinks he’s so irreplaceable in the lineup, judging by his recent comments to Mike Chambers, he should take better care of the puck.

– Jay McClement was tremendous tonight, and I should have named him one of my three stars. Dumb on my part. He was part of a PK that went 5-5, a big difference in the game.

– The key tonight was never allowing Phoenix to take a lead. Once they do, coach Dave Tippett shuts everything down and plays a trap and they are tough to come back against.